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Taste.com.au - June 2013
Eat in, eat out, eat well. Look for the taste liftout on Tuesdays in the Herald Sun, Courier Mail and Daily Telegraph, on Wednesdays in the Adelaide Advertiser, and in Perth’s Sunday Times.

Good old finger-lickin' fried chicken is making its way back to the top of the menu charts, writes Kylie Walker.

From US-style fried chicken to a big, hearty schnitzel at the pub, fried chicken has at least a dozen delicious guises and it's being embraced by celebrity chefs and home cooks across Australia.

With tender pieces of juicy chicken encased in a crisp, crunchy, golden crumb, it's not hard to see why fried chicken not only remains a pub and takeaway favourite, but is one of the hot food trends for 2013.

In Melbourne, at MasterChef star George Calombaris' relaxed eatery St Katherine's, they're serving up KFC– "Katherine's Fried Chicken"; in Sydney, at wildly popular Hartsyard, southern US-style fried chicken has been on the menu since the doors opened just over a year ago and it's such a favourite with diners "there's no way we could take it off", says co-owner and chef Gregory Llewellyn.

Blogs are full of eager reviewers sharing the best places to try Japanese karaage (where chicken pieces are marinated in soy, ginger and sometimes sake), Korean fried chicken in its sweet-sticky-spicy or spring onion-topped versions, Indonesian ayam goreng, or plate-sized old-school chicken schnitzels.

You don't have to eat out to enjoy this comfort food favourite, though. Chicken schnitzels, popcorn chicken and Asian-influenced deep-fried chicken dishes have starred on MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules, inspiring home cooks to give it a go, too.

The secrets to making great fried chicken? Whether you want to make a fast mid-week meal or discover just how a marinated, coated and fried piece of chook can taste, there are a few golden (pun intended) rules to follow.

1. Hot enough

This is at number one for a reason. No matter how top notch your recipe, if you don't get the oil temperature right, you won't get great fried chicken. Oil at the right temperature creates an instant seal on the food.

"If the oil isn't hot enough – or if you add too much food at once, so the oil temperature drops – you'll get really oily chicken, because the food will absorb more oil. And won't be crisp, either," says Good Taste magazine food editor Michelle Southan. "And if the temperature is too high when deep-frying, the chicken bubbles around and bits of the crust can get knocked off."

If you regularly deep-fry, Southan recommends investing in an electric deep-fryer, which gives an accurate temperature control. No fryer? No problem.

Use a thermometer or try the bread cube test. For deep frying, the temperature is usually 170C to 180C. When the oil is ready, a cube of bread turns golden in 15 to 30 seconds, respectively. For pan-frying, Southan uses a secret weapon: her oven.

"With a pan, it's a direct heat, so the coating can brown too much before the chicken is cooked. So I fry both sides in a little oil until golden and then I pop it on a tray and bake at 180C for 10 minutes.

The chicken stays moist but you still get that lovely golden crisp crust."

2. Give it time

Gregory Llewellyn, who admits he has an "obsession with crispy fried food" earlier this year served the masses at ChowTown at Sydney's Big Day Out, says there are two secrets to great fried chicken. Yep, oil temperature is one, and the other is marinating the meat.

And here's where you'll find a hundred different ways to do it.

Marinating usually does double duty – it adds flavour and helps ensure moist, tender chicken. Some recipes will marinate chicken pieces in brine for hours before drying, chilling, coating and cooking; in other recipes, an overnight bath in buttermilk does the trick.

You'll even find recipes that use a long soak in brine and a dip in buttermilk.

Asian fried chicken dishes, such as Japanese karaage or Indonesian ayam goring, also use marinating time to add flavour, using ingredients such as soy sauce, lemongrass and ginger. The bottom line is that if you have the time, marinating the meat is likely to give you a truly tasty, tender result. But not every dish needs a long head start for a great results – if you are short on time, go for a schnitzel or chicken nuggets.

3. The right oil

For shallow-frying and panfrying, use a neutral oil such as grapeseed oil.

It won't add its own flavour to the dish and it gives a lovely crisp result.

For deep-frying, you need an oil that can tolerate really high temperatures; try a vegetable oil such as canola or rice bran.

And always use a fresh batch of oil for deep-frying.

"Not only can heat change the structure of the oil, but you'll have the flavours from your dish and bits of breadcrumbs in it too," Llewellyn says.

4. Stay safe

When you add food to a pot of very hot oil, the oil will spit or bubble up furiously. Use a big, deep pot with plenty of room above the oil surface or an electric deep fryer to make sure you avoid oil bubbling over. Add food carefully, a piece at a time, using a slotted spoon - never tip a batch of chicken pieces into a pot or fryer.

5. Experiment

Play with the flavours in your coatings too – try adding parmesan to a schnitzel coating (it won't stick to the pan the way other cheeses do), or change up the herbs and spices in your final flour or breadcrumb coating. Or try panko crumbs instead of traditional breadcrumbs and see which you prefer.